Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Is this acceptable?

'10 buildings for every rocket'

By Aljazeera

07/24/06 "Aljazeera" -- - The Israeli air force has been ordered to hit 10 buildings in south Beirut - where Hezbollah has its headquarters - for every rocket the group fires at the Israeli port of Haifa.

"Army chief of staff Dan Halutz has given the order to the air force to destroy 10 multi-storey buildings in the Dahaya district (of Beirut) in response to every rocket fired on Haifa," a senior air force officer told army radio on Monday.

Hezbollah rockets killed two people in the northern Israeli city of Haifa on Sunday.

Seventeen Israelis have died in rocket attacks since the beginning of the conflict on July 12.

More than 2,200 Hezbollah rockets had hit northern Israel by Sunday. They have struck as far as Afula, 50km south of the border.

Large areas of predominantly Shia Muslim southern Beirut have been destroyed by Israeli raids. On Wednesday Israeli aircraft dropped 23 tons of explosives on the site of an alleged Hezbollah bunker in the south of the capital.

Jan Egeland, the United Nations humanitarian co-ordinator, on Sunday accused Israel of violating humanitarian law as he toured the destroyed suburbs of south Beirut.

"This is destruction of block after block of mainly residential areas. I would say it seems to be an excessive use of force in an area with so many citizens," he said.

>Hezbollah must be stopped.You have 10 terrorists, and kill 5, how many terrorists are you left with?

I don't think anyone here is particularly sympathetic towards hizbollah, but this isn't a suitable route to secure lasting peace, and those taking extreme action on either side know perfectly well it'll only foster more hostility.

..................................I do have to agree with Anon here - I just don't see a military solution to this issue and I'm sorry but who gives Israel the right to destroy infrastructure like this? How can Lebanon come back from this? And surely all that Israel is doing is creating 10 Terrorists for every one building they destroy. What do the rest of you think?

Karlos.. the real terrorists are the terrorists, not the nation state taking all possible means to defend themself.

Ten to one kill rate- so what? Let me make another analogy. Let's say that your family throws stones at my family for six years, despite being told not to, and disobeying the request to give up your stones. Then one day your whole family goes out and kills one of my family. What is my 'appropriate' response? If I have the means, I'm going to kill your whole family and remove the threat to myself. I won't just stop at one- here it's not about 'equality' or even vengeance, it's about making sure my family is safe.

The bombs have fallen in mainly Christian areas like Byblos, Baabda, Haadath, Achrafieh, Zahle, East Beirut, Khiam, Marjayoun as well as in mainly Druze areas and also in Sunni suburbs in Sidon and of course the Palestinian refugee camps in both Tyre and Sidon which are inhabited by Orthodox Christians and Sunnis mainly.

None of these areas are primarily Shiia, so I don't think that the U.S. policy is primarily aimed against Hizbuallah.

Also the U.S. doesn't want to upset the Shiia in Iraq where the main parties that it is working with in fact have very long historic relations with the Shiia in Lebanon, including of course the Hizbollah Party, Amal etc.

It is difficult to figure out what the U.S./U.K. policy is but one thing we can be pretty sure of: the Israel government wouldn't have done anything this big without greenlight from U.S. and U.K. because Israel is an ally of theirs and they wouldn't want to undermine the interests of their allies who have troops in Iraq and are therefore vulnerable to any Shiia reaction in Iraq.

I guess we'll find out in time what it all means, but in the meantime the 380 deaths in Lebanon have overwhelmingly been civilians....

deano, You're assuming that the Israelis have been behaving like angels whilst extremist groups like hizboallah and hamas throw stones to aggravate them. But that is not the case at all. They have committed many horrible crimes against Palestinians and other groups in the region. You also seem to forget that the Israelis forcibly evicted, by terror gangs, the Palestinian inhabitants of the land they built their state on.

How about this for a solution:The state of Israel is maintained, but the Palestinians are granted their right to return to their home land, at an appropriate number every year, say 10,000 refugees a year? Over a few years this would weaken the extremists in Gaza and the West Bank as people start to see a future with hope. When the process of re-assimilating the Palestinians into Israel is complete, Gaza and the West Bank are assimilated into the State. The new Israel withdraws from all occupied territories of Syria and Lebanon.Peace will ensue.

Do you know why this won't happen? Because the Zionist government of Israel is inhernetly racist and will not accept being outnumbered by the Palestinians. So they maintain their genocide against them.

...........................................Hey Karlos, thank you for your insight,, it is good to see people are trying to think about solutions. And I do have to agree with your conclusion - I get this horrible feeling that the hatred is simple racism - it seems that Israel has become an apartheid state, but because it is not as 'black and white' as skin colour, and because of fear of being labeled anti-Semitic, it doesn’t get denounced as as old South Africa was.

Racism in Israel? LOL how ignorant can you be? Have you heard of the Ethiopian Jews? Hey, you're right, everything is not so black and white. did you know that there are actually muslims in the Israeli forces? the world is strange place huh? LOL

...................................Israel seems to be in the grip of a deep seated racism aimed at the Palestinian people, an almost 40 year occupation of land, the West bank settlements with their Israeli only roads that cut through Palestinian land, the ritualized everyday Humiliation of the Palestinian people through the heavy handed administration of checkpoints manned by frightened young Israeli conscripts who act out that fear and anger. Just because there are Muslims in the IDF doesn't make them not racist, the South African Apartheid regime had plenty of black South African informants - just because they employed Black South Africans, it doesn't mean they weren't racist.

"You can call me anything you like. Call me a monster or a murderer. .Better a live Judeo-Nazi than a dead saint.

"Even if you prove to me that the present war in Lebanon is a dirty immoralwar, I don't care. Even if Galilee is shelled again by Katyushas in a year'stime, I don't really care. We shall start another war, kill and destroy moreand more, until they will have had enough.

"Let them tremble, let them call us a mad state. Let them understand that weare a wild country, dangerous to our surroundings, not normal, that we mightgo crazy if one of our children is murdered, just one! If anyone even raiseshis hand against us we'll take away half his land and burn the other half,including the oil. We might use nuclear arms.

"Even today I am willing to volunteer to do the dirty work for Israel, tokill as many Arabs as necessary, to deport them, to expel and burn them, tohave everyone hate us. . And I don't mind if after the job is done you putme in front of a Nuremberg Trial and then jail me for life. Hang me if youwant, as a war criminal.

"What you don't understand is that the dirty work of Zionism is not finishedyet, far from it." - Ariel Sharon, interview with Amos Oz, Davar 17 December1982.